STUDY OF REGIONALISM: SHOULD WE WAIT FOR FURTHER EVOLUTION?

Abstract

As the concepts of "superpower", "satellite", "second world" were levelled, the volume of new concepts increased – "centre of power", "global political dynamics", "multipolar world pole", "dispersion", "regional system", "independent territories". A hierarchy of political actors began to be built in a new way, where regions of different levels (macroregions, mesoregions, subregions) suddenly became the dominant structural units of the global space. This affected the role and place of regionalism. Conventionally, the development of the discipline "Regional Studies" is divided into three waves: "old regionalism" of the Cold War period; "new regionalism" of the 1990s; "comparative regionalism" of the 21st century. The purpose of the presented work is to identify the evolution of the development of regional studies through a qualitative analysis of the leading works that shaped the face of the science. There is also a question about which areas of regionalism research need further development. As a result, it was concluded that today's context of the world order is significantly different from the context of the 1990s. Comparative regionalism is formed by the world order which is characterized by such processes as the war on terror, humanitarian intervention, multi-level world order, periodic financial crises around the world, and the rise of developing states. Scholarly debates focus on various state-non-state interactions, institutions and processes at various interacting levels, ranging from bilateral to regional, interregional and multilateral. If earlier the region was considered mainly as a microregion, then in modern studies we are talking about the macroregional level. In addition, non-state actors and interest groups are now actively involved in regional cooperation. Therefore, future studies will pay more attention to non-state actors of regional relations.